CHARLESTON, W.Va. — One of the most bitter races in the run up to Tuesday’s election in West Virginia is the contest for Attorney General. Sitting Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and his Democrat opponent Delegate Doug Reynolds aren’t giving an inch with less than a week to go in the campaign.
“Doug Reynolds can’t get away from his radical liberal record,” said Morrisey on MetroNews Talkline Thursday. “He’s been a strong advocate of Hillary Clinton. Now he says he doesn’t know who he’s going to vote for but he donated the maximum amount to her campaign and also donated to Barrack Obama multiple times.”
Reynolds told a different story when asked about the claim on Talkline.
“I would consider myself to be a moderate like a lot of West Virginians,” he said. “I have done nothing to help Hillary Clinton in this election and nothing in the last couple of years. I’ve watched this campaign and it’s been a complete circus. I can tell you I’m not going to support Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump with my vote.”
Reynolds said Clinton’s remarks about coal in the campaign was one of the tipping points which caused him to decide against supporting his party’s presidential nominee. But Morrisey said the work he has done as Attorney General to defend West Virginia’s coal industry from the Obama Administration’s EPA is in jeopardy should Reynolds win on Tuesday.
“Building the national coalition to take on Obama and the Clinton agenda winning an historic victory at the U.S. Supreme Court saved thousands of coal jobs,” Morrisey said. “If Doug Reynolds is elected all of our good work we have done to protect coal jobs is going to end.”
Reynolds contended Morrisey’s ties to the pharmaceutical industry put him in a position of conflict. Reynolds has claimed Morrisey formerly worked for a pharmaceutical company and his wife’s company has gotten big money from the industry for their lobbying efforts. Reynolds said court documents in a case just this week revealed Morrisey’s office cut a deal with drug companies to block the release of information concerning how many pain pills have been distributed in West Virginia. Reynolds claimed it is three or four times the national average, but nobody knows for sure.
“Why would any attorney general or government official not want that information out there,” Reynolds said. “To me it’s obvious. These are the same people who spent over $6 Million dollars attacking me and my family. Clearly they think there’s going to be a different outcome to that legal action if he’s the attorney general or I’m the attorney general. They wouldn’t just throw six-Million of their shareholders dollars down the tubes.”
But Morrisey refused to budge on the drug issue, claiming his previous ties to drug companies, specifically Cardinal Health which has been identified in campaign advertising, were not in a capacity to influence distribution.
“Yes, I represented companies, but never, ever did we put West Virginians at risk. I was a compliance lawyer and did some reimbursement work, but nothing on the supply,” Morrisey said. “I think Doug set the tenor of this race when he went after my family. He went after my wife in a way that was wholly inappropriate.”
The intensity of the race shows little sign of slowing down until the polls close on Tuesday night.